


He's Full of Surprises

by cloudymagnolia



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudymagnolia/pseuds/cloudymagnolia
Summary: Lea, in spite of what Roxas keeps saying, is not a sap.He is callous, unsympathetic, and self-absorbed. Which is why, when he sweeps through the campus gates to get a coffee, chest-deep in his most recent research bender, and sees the pitiful little figure sitting on a bench, crying into a duffel bag in his lap, hand clenched around one of those useless paper maps of campus, he blows right on by, without even sparing him a second chance.Until he does.
Relationships: Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Hayner/Seifer (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé/Xion (Kingdom Hearts), Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	He's Full of Surprises

**Author's Note:**

> What up, friends, have a college AU for no reason except that college won't be a thing this year which is kinda sad.
> 
> Rating purely because people keep swearing at each other.

Lea, in spite of what Roxas keeps saying, is  _ not  _ a sap.

He is callous, unsympathetic, and self-absorbed. Which is why, when he sweeps through the campus gates to get a coffee, chest-deep in his most recent research bender, and sees the pitiful little figure sitting on a bench, crying into a duffel bag in his lap, hand clenched around one of those useless paper maps of campus, he blows right on by, without even sparing him a second chance. 

He doesn’t notice that he’s just a kid, or that his shoulders are shaking, or that his spiky hair sticks up even more than Roxas’s. He doesn’t notice that the kid is wearing only shorts and a sweatshirt, and will probably start getting cold as the sun goes down.

He  _ definitely  _ doesn’t notice the sniffles.

He manages about ten more paces before stopping and reaching longingly for his lighter, dragging his fingers over its edges even though he knows he doesn’t have any cigarettes. Finally, internally screaming, he turns on his heel and stomps back.

“Hey,” he says when he’s close enough. No response. “Hey, kid. You okay?”

That’s good, he thinks to himself. He’ll have been a nice guy who asked, and the kid will say he’s fine, because that’s what  _ everyone  _ does when a stranger asks if you’re okay, and he will  _ very  _ politely choose not to pry into this kid’s life story and go about his merry way and —

The kid shakes his head, still without looking up.

Well, shit, Lea thinks.

“Well, shit,” Lea says.

The kid starts bawling  _ harder _ , which Lea wouldn’t actually have thought was possible a second ago, and — like he always does when faced with audible tears — he panics.

“Shit, no, sorry, I didn’t mean to swear or whatever,” he says, dropping down next to him on the bench. Another pathetic little sob shakes his tiny frame. “Noooo!” Lea groans, tugging on his ponytail. “ _ Please _ , kid, stop crying! Whatever’s wrong, I’ll help you fix it, promise!”

The crying peters off.

“Really?” the figure says, voice hoarse, tilting his head up so just one tear-crusted blue eye is visible. “You’d do that for me?”

“Sure, kid,” Lea says, desperate, even though he knows he really, really wouldn’t but apparently really, really would. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Another sniffle.

“I’m supposed to be here visiting my b-boyfriend,” he begins, and gets no further.

“Aw, man,” Lea says, raising his eyebrows in real and unexpected sympathy. “You got dumped on arrival, huh? That’s tough.”

“ _ No! _ ” the kid says, glaring at him. “Riku wouldn’t do that! But when I got here, I realized I’d lost my phone and I can’t remember the name of his dorm.”

“Oh,” Lea says, wrinkling his nose, sympathy evaporating. “Is that all? Well, where did you plan to meet him?”

“I d-didn’t,” he moans. “He doesn’t know I’m coming. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Lea stares at him, mouth hanging open, trying to come up with something comforting to say.

“Are you an actual dumbass?” is what his mouth finally offers.

To his surprise, the kid chuckles.

“I guess so, huh?” he says, lifting his face enough that he can scrabble at his snotty nose. “My boyfriend would probably say I am. And he’d be right.”

Lea frowns at that, not liking the implication that this kid’s boyfriend makes a habit of insulting him, until he remembers it isn’t his problem. And he doesn’t care.

“I mean, I can’t see how I could have botched this weekend any worse, y’know? Unless Riku’s actually out of town this weekend and didn’t tell me.”

_ Or fucking someone else while his boyfriend’s long distance _ , Lea thinks, because he’s an asshole.

Well, an asshole with a particular point of view on “surprising” your SO with unannounced visits.

“Okay, well, what’s his phone number?” Lea asks, pulling out his phone. “You can borrow my phone to call him — ”

“I don’t have his number  _ memorized _ ,” the kid says, sounding like Lea just suggested he recite the periodic table.

Pity today’s youth.

“Okay,  _ fine _ ,” he says, taking a breath to keep control of his temper. “What’s his last  _ name _ , then? I can at least look him up in the student directory and send him an email telling him to meet you somewhere.”

It’ll be a weird as fuck email, too, Lea thinks. What’ll the subject line be on that sucker?  _ RE: You don’t know me but I found your boyfriend crying on a bench outside please come claim him _ ?

He taps his phone, glancing at the notifications as he goes to unlock it, and feels the blood draining from his face. There, loud and proud on the screen are:

**Roxy <3 6:34 pm**

if u stand me up again 2nite i am breaking up w u

**Roxy <3 6:36 pm**

and b4 u say anything, no we can’t have sex if were broken up

**Roxy <3 7:10 pm**

omfg Lea did u actually fucking forget

“What’s wrong?” the kid asks, placing his hand on Lea’s forearm like  _ he’s  _ the one who broke down crying on some dumbass bench. 

“Uh…nothing. I just realized I’m late to meet my boyfriend.”

The kid takes one look at his face and his hand tightens on his arm.

“Will he be mad?” he asks.

Lea snorts, because  _ Roxas being mad _ is like the understatement of the century. Roxas is a blue-eyed ball of anger and aggression on his  _ best  _ days, and this week  _ alone _ Lea has flaked on him twice and accidentally set his massively expensive psych textbook on fire.

None of that had been his fault  _ per se _ , but…well, they’ve only been dating like two months. He doesn’t know how seriously to take Roxas’s threats yet.

“Well then what are you doing sitting here, then?” the kid yells, shaking him. Lea is startled, both because the kid is actually a lot stronger than he looks but also from the sudden emotion quick-change. “Go meet your boyfriend!”

“And leave you here?” Lea asks. The boy’s face falls, but only for a second. Then he’s glowering, a stubborn jut to his chin.

“Of course! I’ll be fine!”

Lea raises his eyebrows, looking back down at his phone. 

On the one hand, part of him wants to take the easy way out and use this as an excuse to go flying across campus to find Roxas and see how grovelling works as a way of getting himself back into his boyfriend’s good graces. On the other hand, what kind of person would he be if he got three-quarters of the way through helping this dumbass and then gave up?

Also, he’s beginning to wonder if Rox is going to murder him for real if he does show up. Maybe it’s  _ safer  _ to stay here, out in public.

“How late are you?” the kid asks, reacting to Lea’s long silence.

“Forty...seven minutes,” Lea confirms, checking the exact time on his phone

“Holy shit.”

Lea snorts. His hand hovers one second more, finger torn between his messaging app and the web browser that will pull up the school’s directory.

“I know!” the kid says, clapping his hands once together loudly. “You can blame me!”

“What?” Lea says, nonplussed.

“You can blame being late on me! Tell him you were walking through campus and you saw me crying and you stayed and helped me. That way you’ll look like a hero and your boyfriend won’t be mad! But I guess we’ll have to fudge the timings a little...hmm.” He pulls at his lip like he’s being asked to solve a calculus equation in his head. “So, pretend you found me an hour ago, right? Let’s say it took you ten minutes to get me to stop bawling my eyes out, then thirty minutes to walk me around campus because I thought I might recognize my boyfriend’s dorm from the photos I’ve seen, then uh...ten minutes running after me because I saw a dog I wanted to pet...how many minutes am I at now?”

Lea is staring at him, wide eyed, mouth agape, until he finally tips his head back and bursts out laughing.

“ _ What _ ?” the kid demands, put out by the laughter.

“It’s a nice idea,” Lea says. “But I’m not sure how believable it sounds.”

“Hm, yeah,” the kid says, cupping his palm in his fist in such a classic “thinking” pose that it looks like a joke. “I guess there’s nothing stopping you from just making something like that up — oh! I got it!”

The boy gives him a dazzling grin that makes his heart warm up just looking at it, even though he’s pretty sure this idea is going to be terrible. God, he is going soft.

“I’ll just go with you!”

Lea gives him a  _ look _ .

“Stop shooting down my ideas!” he scolds. “I’m not saying I’m going to crash your date, but just — we go in, you can show me off to prove you’re not lying, and I’ll leave. I can wait outside even. I’m sure I can figure out what to do from  _ there _ just as easily as I can from  _ here _ , especially since I don’t even know where  _ here  _ is. And that way, if you still feel like helping me after your date, you can!”

The boy’s smile is triumphant, like he’s just come up with a foolproof plan.

Lea is staring at him, wondering how to tell him — but  _ gently  _ this time — that he’s an idiot, when he realizes that one part of his plan, actually, isn’t that bad of an idea after all.

He’s supposed to be meeting Roxas at The Graveyard, which is a cozy tavern a few blocks off campus. Given that it’s the closest bar to the dorms, does a half-assed job at checking IDs, and gives drink specials to students, it’s undergrad central, especially on Friday nights. As a grad student, normally Lea wouldn’t be caught dead in there, but it’s the only sit-down restaurant that accepts Rox’s meal points.

But for once, it being undergrad central might not be a bad thing. This school isn’t  _ that  _ big — if the kid asks around, he’s bound to run into someone with his boyfriend’s contact information saved in their phone. Hell, he might even run into the man himself.

“Okay,” he says, pushing himself off the bench and getting to his feet.

“You mean you think it’s a good idea?” the kid asks, excited.

Lea snorts. “Well, it’s the best idea we have, at least.”

He glances at his phone and types out a quick:

_ b there in 5. U still there? _

He gets no response, but he  _ does  _ get a read receipt a split second later and sighs.

The tavern is only a five minute walk from where they’ve been sitting, and Lea covers the distance with anxious, ground-eating strides. As soon as the kid had stood up, Lea had realized that he’s actually  _ shorter  _ than he had looked sitting down, but he still manages to keep up with his punishing pace, alternating a power walk with a few jogging steps every few seconds. 

He fills the time peppering Lea with questions, and doesn’t seem terribly concerned when Lea answers them poorly or not at all. By the time they reach The Graveyard, Lea has supplied his name, what he’s studying, why he chose this school, and the brand of eyeliner he uses.

They stop under the restaurant’s awning and Lea motions to the door. The kid pulls it open, blinking in surprise when he’s met with a landing and a staircase down rather than with a hostess booth.

“It’s downstairs,” Lea explains, wondering if the kid is worried he’s taking him someplace shady.

“Oh. Cool!”

Or...not.

At the bottom of the staircase, the space opens up into a comfortable brick dining room, spacious and well-lit in spite of being subterranean. 

A hostess greets them.

“Dinner or drinks?” she asks, hand hovering over the stack of menus beside her, and Axel wrinkles his nose. No  _ way  _ is the kid at his side old enough to drink yet.

“We’re actually meeting someone here,” Lea says.

“Sure, whatever,” the hostess says, customer service facade slipping away as soon as she goes off-script, to be replaced with apathetic boredom.

The kid is looking around, eyes wide and bright, taking in all the people standing at the bar, all the busy tables. Lea just rolls his eyes — he’d been right. Undergrad central — and glances around for Rox, stomach dropping when he doesn’t see him.

Lea claps a hand on the kid’s shoulder so he doesn’t lose him in all the jostling and leads him towards the back. There’s a step-down at the back of the dining room, just large enough to cram a few extra tables in. It’s the last place he’ll try before giving up and resigning himself to a few weeks of too much sea salt ice cream and playing shitty breakup playlists on spotify.

When they step down, only one of the tables is occupied, and he’s so relieved when he sees Roxas that it actually makes him feel  _ cold  _ for a second, like an ice pack has been pressed to an aching muscle. He takes a deep breath and puts his hand over his heart.

The relief is making him feel fond and sentimental, and he can’t help the goofy grin that spreads over his face as he watches Roxas talking and laughing with his very best friends. Then he realizes something and blurts stupidly:

“Wait. I thought tonight was supposed to be date night?”

The chatter at the table cuts out like Lea is a conductor who just waved his baton. One by one, everyone — Hayner, Pence, Olette, even sweet little Xion — turns towards him, eyes ranging from unimpressed to downright hostile. It takes him a second, but then he squirms, realizing what those looks mean. Roxas must have called in the cavalry once he realized that Lea had flaked on him  _ again _ .

Eventually, it’s Roxas who breaks the silence.

“ _ Did _ you,” he says, voice silky soft and oh-so-dangerous.

“Wait!” 

The voice comes from behind him, and Lea nearly has a heart attack before he remembers the kid. He turns to look, and there he is, messy brown hair and anxious blue eyes peeking out from around Lea’s back. 

“It’s not his fault,” the kid continues, but then Lea watches as his face flits through a complicated series of emotions before finally landing on nose-wrinkling quizzicality.

“Roxas?” he asks.

“Sora,” Roxas says, voice flat and unimpressed, but eyes wide with surprise.

“Roxas!” The kid — _ Sora _ , Lea guesses — cheers, pivoting around Lea and launching himself at the other boy. “I totally forgot you went here!”

For one weird moment, Lea’s brain tries to suggest that  _ Roxas  _ is the boyfriend the kid is here to surprise, but then realizes that that doesn’t make any sense. For one thing, Sora is so far from being Roxas’s type that it’s almost funny. He’s shorter than him, smaller, thinner,  _ sweet.  _ For another, the way Roxas is looking at the kid, who’s now hanging off his neck babbling up at him, contains none of the predatory heat he sees when Roxas looks at  _ him.  _ Instead, his eyes are protective, maybe a little proprietary. The same as they are when he looks at Xion.

Finally, Lea realizes as his brain belatedly catches up to the situation, there’s the fact that if Roxas were the boyfriend, the kid wouldn’t have  _ forgotten he goes here. _

And also, the two look a  _ lot  _ alike.

His suspicions are confirmed when Roxas interrupts his stream-of consciousness chatter about how it’s  _ his  _ fault,  _ he  _ got lost, Lea was just trying to help  _ him _ with:

“Let me guess. Uncle Leon and Uncle Cloud took you on a college visit and you got yourself turned around. What happened this time —f orget to charge your phone?”

“ _ No _ ,” Sora says, dropping the hug to pull himself up haughtily. “I’m  _ visiting  _ someone and I  _ forgot  _ my phone.”

Roxas snorts and rolls his eyes.

“Well, you may as well sit down,” he says after a moment. “I’m not letting you wander around campus like a doofus without at least  _ feeding  _ you first.”

Roxas waves him to an open chair next to Xion and Sora flounces into it. He greets the others around the table like they’re old but distant friends, and they greet him back, all smiling, all happy to see him.

Roxas stays standing for another second, narrowing his eyes at Lea before resuming his seat. He doesn’t tell him to get lost, though, which he takes as a victory, so he grabs a chair from one of the empty tables and draws it as close as he can, crowding himself between Roxas and Olette. 

Olette makes room for him. Roxas does not.

“So...your cousin, huh?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the back of Rox’s chair. He learned the hard way that touching Rox when he’s upset just nets him a one-way ticket to pain.

And not the fun kind of pain.

Roxas snorts.

“Sort of,” he says cryptically, scowling down at his menu.

Surprisingly, Sora seems to have been monitoring the conversation, because it’s him who offers more:

“We’re kinda cousins and kinda brothers.”

Lea blinks.

“My dads and Roxas’s moms grew up together,” he continues, waving his hands airily like it makes perfect sense. “When they all wanted to start families they decided one of my dads would surrogate both of us with one of Roxas’s moms. So biologically we’re brothers, but legally — well,” he stops, brow furrowing, like he’s doing calculus again. “I guess none of our parents are related, so legally we’re technically not even cousins, but in  _ reality  _ we’re cousins.”

He nods twice, like he just gave the perfect explanation.

“Yeah, that,” Roxas mutters, flushing.

Lea raises his eyebrows, at first thinking Roxas is embarrassed by the unusual arrangement. But then he realizes —

“Oh  _ ho _ ,” he mutters under his breath, so low only Roxas should hear. “Is Roxas embarrassed because he wuvs his baby brother?”

Roxas punches him in the arm, and Lea  _ glows _ . It means he’s  _ well  _ on his way to being allowed to make this whole shitshow of a week up to his boyfriend.

“Didn’t you hear him? That’s baby  _ cousin _ , dipshit.”

A few minutes later a server takes a break from smoking weed or whatever and remembers that they’re down here. She takes their orders; Lea orders jalapeño poppers and a Moscow mule because he is a classy fucking gentleman, while Rox orders a bacon cheeseburger, medium rare. Sora has made no more attempts at tracking down his boyfriend, instead busying himself with chatting with Hayner and Xion and ordering himself a croque-madame, but Lea figures it’s not his place to bring it up. The kid is safe, with family, and is about to be fed. It’s a good outcome, as far as he’s concerned.

As time passes and there are no more sightings of their server, their table naturally gets louder and more boisterous. Hayner and Sora get in some loud, complicated argument about some TV show they both watch, while Xion, Pence, and Olette — who are sitting at three of the long table’s four corners — shout over the others’ heads about some recent scandal on the blitzball team. In the midst of it, Lea allows his hand to creep up from Rox’s shoulder to brush the spot on the back of his neck that makes him shiver. He has a  _ lot  _ of grovelling to do later, but there’s no harm in laying some of the groundwork now.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lea sees one of the restaurant staff heading towards them, and mutters, “Fucking finally. We’ve only been here a year.” Then he clicks his tongue when he realizes it’s the apathetic hostess, not the weed-smoking server, and she’s leading another large group down the steps. She has to push tables together to seat them, and the group waits on the stairs, the space too cramped to fully enter until she’s finished.

As soon as the new group is seated, the volume from their table declines sharply. At first, Lea thinks it’s to be polite and raises his eyebrows, impressed. But he realizes it’s something else when he notices how everyone except for him and Roxas are leaning in, hissing at each other. Lea grins and leans in too, never one to resist gossip.

“What the fuck is  _ he  _ doing here?” Hayner is whisper-groaning, very smoothly looking everywhere  _ except  _ at the other table.

“He goes to school here, love,” is Olette’s unsympathetic reply. “That’s what you get for going to college in your hometown.”

“Keep your voice  _ down _ , they’ll  _ hear  _ you,” Hayner hisses, and Olette laughs.

Sora has been watching the other table with a strange look in his eye, then leans in and asks the question  _ Lea’d  _ been wanting to.

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“It’s Seifer,” Pence explains, grinning across the table at him. “You remember him, right? He was around that year you came and stayed for the summer.”

“Sure,” Sora says. “But why don’t you like him?”

“ _ Sora _ !” Hayner says, sounding deeply wounded. “Don’t you remember what a dick he always was during our Struggle tournaments and stuff?”

Sora opens and closes his mouth, clearly baffled.

“Okay, maybe he wasn’t the nicest,” he concedes. “But that was when we were  _ ten _ . Are you still carrying around a grudge from  _ that _ ?”

The look Hayner shoots him is murderous, while Roxas snorts, Olette snickers, and Pence grins up at the ceiling. Finally, it’s sweet little Xion who explains:

“I don’t think it’s a  _ grudge _ he’s carrying around anymore…”

“Don’t you start,” Hayner mutters, flushing red, while Sora’s eyes go wide and delighted in comprehension.

“Ohhhhh,” he says, propping his chin in his hand. “Okay, I get it. So the situation with Seifer is...complicated.” Hayner gags. “But what’s the story with the others?”

There’s a brief scuffle as Pence turns to look over his shoulder at the other table while Hayner punches him and hisses:

“Stop! He’ll see you!”

“Two of them are Rai and Fuu,” Olette jumps in, ignoring them. “Do you remember them from before?”

“I remember Rai,” Sora says, scratching his face. “Man, he got  _ massive _ .”

“Yeah. Then Fuu is the silver-haired girl with the weird eyes. I’m not surprised you don’t remember her, she’s really quiet. They’re nice enough. We started seeing more of them in high school. Fuu did yearbook with me, and Rai was on the blitzball team with these idiots. I don’t know the other two people at the table, though. They must not be local kids.”

“The blonde girl is from Radiant Gardens,” Xion supplies. “She’s in my art class. She’s nice.”

“And then the silver-haired hulk is Seifer’s roommate,” Hayner mutters through gritted teeth. Olette turns to look at the other table, masking it as a stretch, and whistles low.

“I think you mean silver-haired  _ hunk _ . Wouldn’t I just  _ love  _ to room with that.”

“Shut up! He’s not that good looking! And he’s probably a tool!” Hayner snaps.

“Awww, it’s cute when you’re jealous,” Olette coos, while Pence helpfully supplies:

“I don’t think he is a tool, actually. I thought he was, at first, because he’s always so cold and unfriendly and he’s always staring at his phone, but he’s in my history class and he’ll lend out his notes to people who miss.”

“Yeah?” Sora says, eyes flickering to the other table. “What else do you know about him?”

“Well,” Pence begins.

“Shut up! Stop talking about this!” Hayner snarls, forgetting to keep his voice down, and it’s loud enough that silence falls not just at their table, but at the other table, too. Lea feels his features spread into a wide, wolfish grin as both sets of heads turn towards each other and eye contact is made.

Olette and Xion try to salvage the moment by waving, all friendly smiles, and Pence and Roxas nod. The folks at the other table wave back. Well, all except Seifer, who blushes and stares down at the table —“ _ Awww _ ,” Lea whispers to Roxas — and the silver-haired boy, whose face flicks through surprise and amusement and eventually settles on…

Anger? 

A second later, the boy is up and moving, ignoring his friends calling after him. For a second, Lea thinks he’s heading for Hayner, and wonders if Hayner actually has a  _ reason  _ to be jealous in spite of Seifer’s blush, but then he stops just behind an unruly mop of brown hair and, in one smooth motion, pulls the chair out and around without disrupting the figure sitting in it.

Next to him, he feels Roxas tense, like he’s about to leap up, and Lea — with the benefit of knowing  _ who  _ Sora is here to visit — clamps down on him hard to keep him where he is. Both tables have gone silent as the two boys have a sort of staring match, narrow-eyed teal versus cheeky blue. Finally, teal is the first to blink, then looks up to the ceiling, then a second later he’s grabbed Sora by the front of his shirt and pulled him into what looks to be a searing kiss.

The step-down descends into chaos.

Roxas starts shouting obscenities, while Hayner stares with bug-wide eyes and Xion giggles. Olette wolf whistles and Pence whoops, backed up by cheering and clapping from the other table. Meanwhile, Sora pulls his face free of the suction for just long enough to hook a foot around the other boy’s ankle and send him sprawling back to slump against the wall. Lea’s impressed; the move looks practiced. It puts the other kid at just the right height for Sora to kiss him without having to step up onto his tiptoes, and instead of being bothered, the other boy sinks his hands into Sora’s hair. 

Finally, when the rest of the peanut gallery is beginning to calm down, Lea elbows Rox to get him to stop cussing. Slowly, Sora pulls away, and Lea thinks he hears the taller one whimper. Then he stands up straight and pulls Sora deep into his chest, burying his face in his hair and pressing kisses to the top of his head. Awww.

Sora lets him have his way for a minute, then squirms out of his arms and turns to face them, lips swollen and smile triumphant.

“Guys!” he says. “This is — ”

“The boyfriend?” Lea asks.

“The boyfriend!”

“ _ You little shit, you didn’t tell me you were dating anyone! _ ”

Honestly, Lea’s impressed by how mild Rox’s language is, all things considered, and just rubs his back while he gets it out of his system. Sora doesn’t seem too bothered by it either, just pouts until Roxas is red-faced and  _ has  _ to take a breath before edging in:

“Aww, c’mon, Roxas! I knew if I told you I was dating Riku you’d behave like this!”

“ _Riku?_ ” Roxas actually spits. “You mean that so-called “ _best friend_ ” of yours who started being such a dick to you? The one you were _crying over_ for like a _year_? Didn’t you say you thought he _hated_ you now?”

Riku turns scarlet while Sora grins uncertainly.

“Uh...it turns out I was wrong about that,” he says.

“Ahhh, gay panic,” Olette says wisely. “Don’t worry, buddy, it can happen to the best of us.”

“ _ Olette! _ ” Hayner yelps, then groans and buries his head in his hands when he realizes what he’s just done as Olette snorts at him. 

“A- _ hem _ .”

They all look up from the mini drama playing out in front of their eyes to see their server standing in the stairway, carrying a tray totally overburdened with plates. To her credit, she seems completely unfazed by the tableau in front of her, like she sees worse all the time, but Lea notices that her arms  _ are  _ straining with what looks like could easily be twenty pounds of food and tableware, all held at an awkward angle.

Muttering his apologies, the boyfriend — _ Riku _ , he thinks was the name — grabs Sora and moves him out of the way.

“The kitchen was backed up so both tables' orders came out at the same time,” she announces to the step-down at large. “So you’re going to have to help me with who ordered what.”

“Actually,” one of the guys at the other table says. “If it’s all the same to you, do you mind if we push our tables together?”

The server doesn’t bother to hide the way she rolls her eyes, but eventually shrugs.

“Sure, whatever,” she says — they should just go ahead and make that the restaurant’s tagline with how often the staff say it — “Just hurry it up, I’ve got other tables.”

It ends up taking them a few minutes to rearrange the step down, and that’s even with the server’s help, once she realizes she won’t be able to leave until they’ve succeeded in their mission. Part of the reason it takes so long is that Olette, Pence, and the silver-haired girl are quietly orchestrating the seating arrangements while the others haul around tables and chairs, so that in the end, in addition to Sora and Riku and Roxas and Lea sitting next to each other, so are Hayner and Seifer and Xion and the blonde-haired girl from the other table. The only person who seems at all bothered by the new arrangement is Hayner, who blushes and glares down at the table, even as he accepts a bite of Seifer’s chicken parm off of his fork and tilts his head to listen attentively to every word coming out of his mouth.

With most of the table’s attention on the flirting blonde boys, Lea is able to take a second to observe Sora and Riku more carefully. It  _ still  _ isn’t his problem, and he  _ still  _ doesn’t care, but he can’t get Sora’s comment about his boyfriend thinking he’s a dumbass out of his head.

“Hey,” Riku says, after accepting one of Sora’s fries from his own hand even though he has a plate of his own. “You didn’t have to ignore my calls today. It’s okay if you want to come and visit Roxas sometimes. I wouldn’t have been mad — you could have just told me to stay out of your hair.”

“What?” Sora asks intelligently, mumbling around a massive bite of sourdough, ham, cheese, and mornay sauce.

“My calls,” Riku repeats. He doesn’t sound mad, which impresses Lea. “I said I’d call after my midterm, remember? I tried calling three times, and you let all three ring to voicemail. I was worried about you. It’s because you were here with Roxas, right?”

Sora stares at him, mouth hanging open, and Lea winces, now far more acquainted with the sight of half-chewed croque madame than he ever wanted to be. Then he swallows — thankfully — and shakes his head hugely.

“ _ No _ , you dummy!” he says. “I’m here to visit  _ you! _ Just…well, I wanted it to be a surprise, and then I realized I had left my phone at home, and I didn’t know how to find you, and…”

“But...you were sitting here all this time while I was at the other table. I thought you were...I dunno. Hiding from me.”

“ _ Hiding  _ from you!” Sora snorts. “No, I was just pumping them for information.”

“What?”

“About  _ you _ ,” Sora says smiling. “How you are when I’m not around to look out for you. You know, you could try being a little nicer. Opening up more to people.”

Riku flushes.

“I know,” he mutters. “I’m just not good at talking to strangers. You know that.”

“I know,” Sora says back, trailing his fingers across Riku’s cheek. “But I know you’re trying. And I’m so proud of you for that.”

Lea is just able to look away before they start sucking face again. Roxas is stroking Lea’s knee under the table, and Lea loses track of them for a while.

He picks the thread back up when Riku leans over the table and says to Seifer,

“Hey. You, Rai, and Fuu are going out after this, right?”

“Yeah,” Seifer says, leaning back in a stretch and throwing the world’s least-nonchalant arm over the back of Hayner’s chair. “We’ll be out for a bit.”

“Okay, great.” 

A second leader, Riku is rifling through his wallet, handing forty munny to Lea.

“Could you, uh…” he waves at him and Sora.

Lea smiles his wolf’s grin again as, on his other side, Roxas snarls.

“Leave it to me, little man,” he says, snatching the munny out of his hands. Forty munny will more than cover their bill, and leave Lea with some change to pocket himself. 

Unethical? Maybe. But he’s a starving grad student and has learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Oh, hey, Riku!” Seifer says, when he notices them leaving hand in hand.

“Yeah?”

“I, uh...I think me, Rai, and Fuu are actually gonna have a bro’s night tonight.” Fuu elbows Seifer hard, but he doesn’t even blink, apparently very used to it. “I’ll probably crash in one of their rooms tonight.”

Seifer winks at him and Riku turns  _ maroon _ , but nods his thanks.

“What — ” Sora begins.

“He’s making himself scarce so that you two can have sex, Sora,” Olette helpfully interprets, and for a second Lea thinks that either Riku’s or Roxas’s brains will explode. He’s interested in Sora’s reaction, though. He expects him to be just as embarrassed as either of the others, but instead he only drops his eyes for a second, before glancing back up at Riku, flushed and pleased. 

“Cute,” Lea murmurs to Roxas, who makes a retching sound deep in his throat.

“Well,” Lea says to the table at large, rubbing his hands together, as soon as the two are gone. “They’re an adorable couple, huh?”

As predicted, this sparks an outburst from Roxas, a coughing fit from Hayner, and whoops and chatter from everyone else. The mayhem is more than enough to entertain him until the check comes and they’re all done figuring the bill.

Lea isn’t surprised when Xion and the blonde girl — Naminé, he learns — leave together, or when Seifer, Fuu, and Rai leave, dragging Hayner with them. That leaves Olette and Pence to exchange smirks and leave, too, until only him and Roxas are sitting side-by-side at the demolished table.

“So…” Lea says, suddenly nervous with no one else to distract him from the conversation they need to have. “You mad?”

“You bet I’m mad, buddy,” Roxas says, but he sounds more tired than angry.

“Good,” Lea says. “I deserve it.”

They’re quiet for a moment together.

“Do you really want to break up with me?” he asks.

Roxas takes a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth.

“No,” he says, and part of Lea’s heart that he’d been holding stiff and awkward all night finally relaxes.

“...want me to try to make it up to you?” he offers.

“Will there be apple cider donuts?” Roxas asks.

“There can be.”

“Will you bottom for me tonight?”

“You don’t need a reason to ask for that, you know. But yeah. Of course.”

Roxas tilts his head, considering.

“Deal.”

Then he takes his hand, and together, they walk back through the crowd of people and out into the night. 


End file.
